The invention relates to an apparatus for the conversion of kitchen waste grease and oil to a landfill acceptable solid material. A grease collection cartridge has an inlet for receiving kitchen waste grease, a mixing baffle within the cartridge and a package within the cartridge containing a reactant to solidify the grease and oil into soap.
Oil/grease and solid waste containment removal or recovery systems are well known in the prior art. Over the past 30 years there has been a steady move toward requiring facilities for servicing kitchen grease-bearing water flows. Sewer system lines can be clogged from the oil/grease materials put into the sewer systems from food handling facilities.
This has led more and more sewer authorities to require programs to control handling and storage of fats, oils and grease waste materials. These programs regulate food handling facilities and the manner in which they process oil/grease and solid waste material. The object of many of these programs is to ensure food handling facilities remove as much of the oil and grease as possible from the effluent flow, thereby releasing only grey water and solids into the sewer system.
There are many and very different kinds of oil/grease separators known in the art. Once the grease and oil have been removed from the effluent water, and the grey water has been directed to the sewer, storage and handling of the removed oil and grease is a costly and complicated process. The oil and grease removed from the effluent water must be stored in a separate system that cannot empty into the sewer system lines. Consequently, underground storage containment units have been utilized, as well as aboveground storage containment units. These storage units require servicing and periodic maintenance.
Servicing typically consists of having a maintenance contractor pump the oil/grease from the storage container and haul it to an approved facility. These storage systems may have sensors and elaborate computer generated signals to the maintenance facilities in order to ensure the grease and oil are removed before the storage unit overflows. In the absence of sensors that automatically sense when the storage unit needs servicing, humans must check the storage container periodically. The job of checking the grease level in the storage container may be a distasteful job, and in some cases the task may be ignored. The appropriate storage and removal to an acceptable waste receiving facility is as important in the process as the initial separation of the oil and grease from the effluent water of commercial kitchen sinks.
Landfills limit the kinds of waste material that can be stored in landfills and have stringent rules defining acceptable storage items. Oils that are liquid at room temperature and the residual water content of the commercial kitchen sink waste make the removed products quite liquid. As a result, grease and oil waste products removed from commercial kitchen effluent flows are typically not permitted to be disposed of in landfills because they remain so liquid as to fail what is known as the “paint filter” test.
Consequently, there is a need in the art for the conversion of the oil/grease waste material into a substance that does not require special handling or storage in a special removal facility, but rather that can be placed within sanitary landfills just like other ordinary garbage.